FA SHO. FA SHO.

“No matter where I go, or how successful or unsuccessful I am, I never in my life shall ever feel that ‘they’ are coming. There is no ‘they’ to me, because I know about being ‘they’; I have been ‘they.’ ” -Sam Levenson

In my sophomore year at South Shore High School, a student was stabbed to death and I would forever have something to qualify for others just how wild and sometimes dangerous a place it was. The metal detectors the Board of Ed. promptly installed did nothing to provide a sense of security, and in a strange way probably only made the school a more sinister place to walk into every morning. It came as no surprise to me when the city announced earlier this week they would close my alma mater along with 4 other schools.

Still, South Shore was a colorful, dynamic and often wonderful place, where I learned so much about who I am today. And, I'd be doing myself a disservice if I implied it wasn't an environment of ambition...after all, I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by my pals on the 1995 Yearbook Committee.

Ironically, when Googleing "South Shore High School, Brooklyn" the website Greatschools.net came up second on it's list of search results. One parent review on the site contained a revealing quote from February of this year, "This school has good things to offer, but hte children there are sooo bad. Police is always there. [sic]"

As a child of NYC public school teachers (and then administrators) and a product of the NYC Board of Ed. I have a hard time accepting that closing the schools will solve the problems that the staffs there managed every day. The majority of the safety and performance issues that serve as rationale for the closings stem from a place outside these schools walls. Doing away with the structures is not the answer. Im left wondering, where will all the problems go?

It was an article from the NYTimes City Section today that sparked this post and it's where the opening quote was pulled from. The subject of the article, Tilden High School, is another Brooklyn school being closed and incidentally, the one which my father graduated from. Fa Sho. For Sure. For Shore.